Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Dionne pretended to be asleep when she heard Errol moving on top of and then inside Evangeline. She felt ashamed by the heat that swept over her body as she listened to them, and then a new wave of shame washed in when she wanted to know if the sounds they made were like or unlike the sounds Errol had made with her mother. Dionne couldn’t get to sleep after that and so she was happy to be shaken awake from what was really just a nap to get on the road for the Grand Kadooment parade.

All Kadooment Day, Dionne and her dance partner, Isaiah, Errol and Evangeline, and the rest of the people in their band danced and drank, and sometimes stopped to eat snacks from the food vendors on the parade route. They didn’t have any fancy costumes like the other revelers, just beat-up shorts and t-shirts. By the end of the day these rags would be better thrown away than tossed in the laundry, soiled by sweat (their own and others’), baby powder, paint, and all manner of other grime. Every once in a while Dionne looked out of the corner of her eye at her father, and saw him dancing, waving a rag in the air that was steadily turning from white to gray as they progressed. Errol was enjoying himself, dancing with Evangeline with abandon. Dionne realized she hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time. Something had shifted between Dionne and Errol, and he seemed less like a father to her that day, more like a friend.

Dionne was sure that her dance partner’s crotch would soon be imprinted on the back of her shorts. His full name was Isaiah, but he’d told her to call him Izzy. She was glad that the music and people were too loud for her to call him anything, much less that nickname, which she thought was odd for a boy. At one point, when the liquor made the muscles in Dionne’s shoulders tighten and her head feel light, she mused to herself about whether she’d be able to clean him off her like the dirt she felt graveling her skin, and which she’d long since stopped trying to wipe away. She ground her behind into the hard pants front of Isaiah, who was not unlike Chad or Trevor or Darren, winding her waist like Taneisha had taught her to do on Sunday nights when they listened to Dahved Levy’s radio show, collapsing with laughter every time he interrupted the music with his trademark “Rocking you, rocking you, rocking you” tagline.

Like the others and like her father, Isaiah was tall and red-skinned. Other girls would have called Dionne’s suitors cute, but it was their flaws that drew Dionne in. In the case of Trevor, it was his razor-sharp widow’s peak. With Darren, a lisp he hid by not talking much, which only made him more mysterious and attractive. When Isaiah walked up to her that morning holding a cup of orange juice like an offering plate, she noticed that one of his legs was shorter than the other, and this endeared him to her.

“You have to keep up your strength once we get going,” he said. She wondered how Isaiah would manage with his mismatched legs on the long parade route, but by the late afternoon he had, as he promised, not let her out of his sight, and he didn’t show any signs of slowing down anytime soon.

All the shops along the parade route were closed, and some of the more cautious owners boarded up their windows, lest they become the victims of overzealous revelers. Because while most of the partying on Kadooment Day was in good fun, it wasn’t unusual to see people whose quarrels had been brewing since the year before use the day to settle scores. Most of the brawls ended soon after they started, but sometimes blood mixed in with the other residue of the day. It was no more surprising to see drunk, injured people taking breaks on the side of the road on Kadooment Day than it was to see children in their uniforms on their way to school on a Monday morning.

Crop Over was a chance to see and be seen and, for some, to tinkle a little extra change into their pockets. People were lined up three deep along the road, cheering on the masqueraders, singing and dancing and eating, making jokes about which fat women did not belong in their costumes, which guys and girls were fit and ripe for the picking, judging for themselves which bands had the best music and the most beautiful costumes. Some opened up their houses for parties, and other, more enterprising folks made their money by charging to use their bathrooms, or selling water and cool drinks.

By the time the band Dionne and Isaiah were dancing with neared the turn onto Spring Garden, it was four o’clock, and the parade was almost over, and everyone was wondering when the rain that came every Kadooment Day would pour down on their heads. If you asked a reveler, they might have told you that God was holding his water back stingily, making them beg for relief from the heat and the reassurance that this year was like any other year.

The turnoff from Black Rock Main Road onto Spring Garden Highway was a tight one, barely wide enough for the two lanes of car and foot traffic it usually fit, much less the trucks with their outsize speakers and respective masses dancing beside and behind them. The music was turned down so that the truck could turn without injuring anyone. And it was into that cavern of relative quiet, over the echoes of music from the bands ahead and behind them, above the DJ’s awkward small talk and bad jokes, that Dionne heard the unmistakable sound of fists landing on flesh.

Dionne’s drink turned over with the commotion. The coconut cocktail slicked her wrist, and she looked up. Just a moment before, her right hand had clasped a length of rope that distinguished their band from the crowd of onlookers. Her beverage was at a precarious lean in her left hand. Dionne’s entire midsection was plastered to Isaiah as they marched in time to “left right/left right/in the government boots/the government boots.” She felt the rain in the air and she wondered what her hair looked like. She was sure that so many hours of dancing had sweated out her perm.

Now, Dionne felt the crowd push her and Isaiah forward, and they were, impossibly, closer than they had been before. The motion lifted Dionne off her feet, and she felt Isaiah’s hands at her hips, trying to hold her down. Her father, who just a minute before had been sweating next to her, and working up on Evangeline, was beating on someone whom she took at first for a woman, until the crowd joined in. She could see Errol’s sweat glistening on the roll of flesh below his blue baseball cap. And then suddenly his cap was up and off his head, propelled by the men who had jumped in to pound their victim. Some threw punches, others branches, and then rocks of all sizes. Finally, clouds that had been holding rain back all day broke open. Dionne could hear shouting and rocks whistling through the air and breaking glass and the deafening roar of rain. Above the underwater feeling of rum sloshing against her skull, Dionne made out the words: “You nasty buller man!”

And then she saw the signature band of hair ties on Jean’s wrist.

“So I see you come back determined to destroy every last thing Avril had. I always knew you wouldn’t rest until you tore her down to the last bits,” Jean shouted.

“You want me to shut your blasted mouth?” Errol said, leaning in to Jean, whom he had pinned on the ground. The men were close enough that they could see each other’s eyes, but Errol was still talking loud enough for the crowd to hear. “I knew from the first time I saw you, all you wanted was my cock in your mouth. If that is what you want, I could give it to you, you know,” Errol said, making a motion to unbuckle his pants.

“From what Avril said, it wasn’t much to write home about,” Jean replied.

“Looks like I’m going to have to shut your fucking mouth since you won’t do it yourself.” And with that, Errol landed blows on Jean’s head and shoulders, pummeling him until Jean’s lips were both the size and color of plums. Jean tried to fight back, but his punches were no match for Errol’s heft and thick fists.